http://www.espn.com/boxing/story/_/id/23669876/terence-crawford-jeff-horn-education-bud-crawford
OMAHA, Neb. -- Grover Wiley was 25, six years into a pro career that would see him retire the great Julio Cesar Chavez. Terence Crawford Jr. -- "Bud," as everyone called him -- was in junior high.
It wasn't a fair fight, what their trainer had in mind. It was an exercise designed to break an unhappy child at the cusp of adolescence. Midge Minor, a cantankerous former amateur, could see his talent. But the trainer remained beholden to certain orthodoxies, the most infuriating violation of which was Bud's mystifying tendency to suddenly turn southpaw. These sparring sessions -- a kid paired with an already hardened pro -- were to cure him of that.
"I'm trying to rip out his insides," Wiley recalls. "Crush his ribs."
Then, as soon as Bud went lefty, Grover threw his most devious combination: a shot to the elbow followed by an uppercut intended to pierce the boy's solar plexus. Not only did the kid stay southpaw, he seemed gleefully emboldened.
Bud liked to hurt you.
It felt like a ball-peen hammer, Wiley remembers, the knuckle denting his nasal cartilage. More than a decade had passed since Wiley had wandered into the CW Boxing Club. He'd been the only white kid in the gym, and perhaps because of it, never backed down. Wiley conceded nothing ... until the day 13-year-old Bud Crawford hit him with that straight left. Then he turned to Midge.
"Can't do it," he said. "You can't change this kid."
Perhaps there's a better fighter in the world right now, but only one. None are like Crawford though, a completely dichotomous being. His ability to shift stances in the ring seems a metaphor for something larger, the condition of his soul, perhaps. Just as he moves fluidly from left to right, orthodox to southpaw, so can he pivot from good to evil, sadism to empathy. He's not a creature of contradictions, but a man whose conflicting natures exist in a peculiar state of harmony.
He's a dutiful father to five children, but still on probation himself. A man who once fantasized about crushing an opponent's skull, Crawford now plans another mission to Africa, this one to deliver medical supplies. Still, there are days when the hoodlum-cum-humanitarian will interrupt his shadowboxing to announce with rapturous delight: "I'm a knock Horn's a-- clean the f--- out."
"Horn" would be Jeff Horn, the large, rugged and perhaps underestimated champion he'll fight for the title June 9 at the MGM Grand and broadcast on ESPN+. It'll be Crawford's maiden voyage in the welterweight division.
At 140 pounds, Crawford was the first unified champion in any division since 2006. He has been voted Fighter of the Year twice by ESPN, and once by the Boxing Writers Association. What the resume fails to convey, however, is a predisposition -- unnatural even among fighters -- to mine pleasure from another man's pain. If he considers an opponent to have been disrespectful -- worth noting here that Horn's trainer has already called him a "princess" -- he'll carry the guy for extra rounds just to inflict more injury and humiliation.
"Bud's a kind dude," says Brian McIntyre, his longtime trainer. "But he be wanting to hurt [people]."
Miss Debra and Terence stand in the kitchen at her home.
"They were always arguing," says Crawford, recalling his parents at home on Larimore Street in North Omaha. "Both of 'em want to get drunk and argue and then, you know, that was pretty much it. ... From the time I was a kid, I'd see my dad going in and out, in and out. I used to cry when he left because my dad was like my best friend when he was there. ... He always told me he was proud of me, have me hitting on his hands, even when I was like 2 years old."
Gonna be our million-dollar baby, said the father.
He ain't gonna be s---, said his mother.
"That's just my mom," Crawford says. "She got this 'tough love' demeanor."
Miss Debra, as his mother is known, didn't like people hugging up on her, either. She allowed it when Bud was only about kindergarten age. Debra's brother, Michael, had just been stabbed to death -- through the heart, the story goes -- by his girlfriend.
"After I went to the funeral I started having these real bad nightmares to where I didn't want to sleep alone," Crawford recalls. "I used to visualize the casket. I wanted to sleep with my mom. I couldn't even take a bath by myself because I'm thinking someone's going to come get me."
"He got in bed with me," Miss Debra says. "He was young. Always had his hands balled up in a fist."
What's more, Bud reminded her of Michael. "He got some of my brother's ways, his moves."
The similarity became more apparent when he was 7, and began boxing at CW. Uncle Michael had a mean streak, too, and what's more, could take you out with either hand. "That little switch Bud does? It comes natural," says Carl Washington, the gym's founder. "I always believed it was something in the line."
What wasn't genetic, Crawford argues, was learned the hard way at the hands of Miss Debra, typically after she'd been drinking Budweiser.
"She had a problem with drinking," he says. "I think most of it was because of her and my dad was going through what they were going through, and she was more depressed than anything.
"I done got hit with a belt, a toy, a stick, extension cord, a switch off a tree, whatever. At the same time, my pain tolerance went up. ... It came to the point where it built toughness. ... Yeah, it hurt, but I wasn't scared. I knew what was coming. Wasn't nothing I wasn't prepared for."
It was a formidable education, that which all great fighters must eventually master: fear. Miss Debra enabled him to conquer his own imagination. Be it a casket or a strap or the prospect of Wiley trying to smash his ribs, Bud knew he could get to the other side.
"I always have the ability to believe in myself when nobody else does." And one day, when he was about 12: "I just look at her like, 'Pshh, that don't hurt.' I grabbed the belt, tell her, 'You ain't hitting me no more.'"
Terence Crawford goes through timed rounds of working the bag and box jumping with Wayne Sullivan, a friend of Crawford's who competes in MMA.
They'd still be partying when Wiley pulled up. It was 4 a.m. on Larimore Street, with that clatter people make when they're drinking on the porch, the lit end of a Newport, glowing like a firefly.
Debra Crawford would call to her son: "Your white daddy's here."
Wiley could tell the remark hurt, as Terence Sr. -- once semi-famous in Omaha as a high school wrestler -- was away in the Navy.
"What you crying about?" Wiley asked Crawford as he climbed into the truck.
Bud, an eighth grader, would vow never to smoke or drink. Then they'd head up the old Mormon Trail for roadwork -- anywhere from three to five miles -- before Wiley dropped him off at school. Exactly which school is difficult to recall, as Bud was thrown out of five -- all for fighting.
That made him right at home in the CW Boxing Club, whose members were drawn from the ranks of north Omaha's Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples and a branch of Insane Vice Lords that included Bud's future trainer, Brian McIntyre. While he cuts a Falstaffian figure in the boxing world -- "BoMac," as he's known, wasn't always this cuddly. McIntyre once put a kid through a glass door. He even shot at a cop. But come afternoon, if he wasn't locked up, Bo would be in the gym.
"Carl Washington saved me," he says.
By the mid-'90s, Washington was counseling gang members full time, leaving most of the boxing -- and some of the saving, perhaps -- to Midge.
"Turn your ass back around," Midge would yell at Crawford.
The cranky trainer and his recalcitrant charge made for an oddly beautiful pairing, noticed McIntyre, who felt some simpatico with the kid. Crawford was more than a fellow delinquent. BoMac remembered the trepidation with which
Mayweather. Still, Bud's burgeoning technique remained very much his own. From the right side, he had more power. From the left, however, he found a better rhythm, a sadistic southpaw jazz.
"It would confuse me," says Rosendo Robles, the gym's other young alpha. "Then I'd have to take a step back and he'd catch you with the lead left or a right hook."
Robles was one weight class bigger, with a vicious left hook. Midge kept them mostly apart, like fighting dogs, else they rip into each other. On the road for tournaments, though, they shared a room. If their days involved violence (not all of it in the ring), their nights ended peacefully: Bud and Rosendo on their knees, giving thanks before turning out the light.
What really surprised, Rosendo, though, came after he lost in the Junior Olympics. Rosendo couldn't help it; he began to weep.
"Don't worry," said Crawford, putting his arms around Rosendo. "It'll be OK."
Bud Crawford was a hugger.
OMAHA, Neb. -- Grover Wiley was 25, six years into a pro career that would see him retire the great Julio Cesar Chavez. Terence Crawford Jr. -- "Bud," as everyone called him -- was in junior high.
It wasn't a fair fight, what their trainer had in mind. It was an exercise designed to break an unhappy child at the cusp of adolescence. Midge Minor, a cantankerous former amateur, could see his talent. But the trainer remained beholden to certain orthodoxies, the most infuriating violation of which was Bud's mystifying tendency to suddenly turn southpaw. These sparring sessions -- a kid paired with an already hardened pro -- were to cure him of that.
"I'm trying to rip out his insides," Wiley recalls. "Crush his ribs."
Then, as soon as Bud went lefty, Grover threw his most devious combination: a shot to the elbow followed by an uppercut intended to pierce the boy's solar plexus. Not only did the kid stay southpaw, he seemed gleefully emboldened.
Bud liked to hurt you.
It felt like a ball-peen hammer, Wiley remembers, the knuckle denting his nasal cartilage. More than a decade had passed since Wiley had wandered into the CW Boxing Club. He'd been the only white kid in the gym, and perhaps because of it, never backed down. Wiley conceded nothing ... until the day 13-year-old Bud Crawford hit him with that straight left. Then he turned to Midge.
"Can't do it," he said. "You can't change this kid."
Perhaps there's a better fighter in the world right now, but only one. None are like Crawford though, a completely dichotomous being. His ability to shift stances in the ring seems a metaphor for something larger, the condition of his soul, perhaps. Just as he moves fluidly from left to right, orthodox to southpaw, so can he pivot from good to evil, sadism to empathy. He's not a creature of contradictions, but a man whose conflicting natures exist in a peculiar state of harmony.
He's a dutiful father to five children, but still on probation himself. A man who once fantasized about crushing an opponent's skull, Crawford now plans another mission to Africa, this one to deliver medical supplies. Still, there are days when the hoodlum-cum-humanitarian will interrupt his shadowboxing to announce with rapturous delight: "I'm a knock Horn's a-- clean the f--- out."
"Horn" would be Jeff Horn, the large, rugged and perhaps underestimated champion he'll fight for the title June 9 at the MGM Grand and broadcast on ESPN+. It'll be Crawford's maiden voyage in the welterweight division.
At 140 pounds, Crawford was the first unified champion in any division since 2006. He has been voted Fighter of the Year twice by ESPN, and once by the Boxing Writers Association. What the resume fails to convey, however, is a predisposition -- unnatural even among fighters -- to mine pleasure from another man's pain. If he considers an opponent to have been disrespectful -- worth noting here that Horn's trainer has already called him a "princess" -- he'll carry the guy for extra rounds just to inflict more injury and humiliation.
"Bud's a kind dude," says Brian McIntyre, his longtime trainer. "But he be wanting to hurt [people]."
Miss Debra and Terence stand in the kitchen at her home.
"They were always arguing," says Crawford, recalling his parents at home on Larimore Street in North Omaha. "Both of 'em want to get drunk and argue and then, you know, that was pretty much it. ... From the time I was a kid, I'd see my dad going in and out, in and out. I used to cry when he left because my dad was like my best friend when he was there. ... He always told me he was proud of me, have me hitting on his hands, even when I was like 2 years old."
Gonna be our million-dollar baby, said the father.
He ain't gonna be s---, said his mother.
"That's just my mom," Crawford says. "She got this 'tough love' demeanor."
Miss Debra, as his mother is known, didn't like people hugging up on her, either. She allowed it when Bud was only about kindergarten age. Debra's brother, Michael, had just been stabbed to death -- through the heart, the story goes -- by his girlfriend.
"After I went to the funeral I started having these real bad nightmares to where I didn't want to sleep alone," Crawford recalls. "I used to visualize the casket. I wanted to sleep with my mom. I couldn't even take a bath by myself because I'm thinking someone's going to come get me."
"He got in bed with me," Miss Debra says. "He was young. Always had his hands balled up in a fist."
What's more, Bud reminded her of Michael. "He got some of my brother's ways, his moves."
The similarity became more apparent when he was 7, and began boxing at CW. Uncle Michael had a mean streak, too, and what's more, could take you out with either hand. "That little switch Bud does? It comes natural," says Carl Washington, the gym's founder. "I always believed it was something in the line."
What wasn't genetic, Crawford argues, was learned the hard way at the hands of Miss Debra, typically after she'd been drinking Budweiser.
"She had a problem with drinking," he says. "I think most of it was because of her and my dad was going through what they were going through, and she was more depressed than anything.
"I done got hit with a belt, a toy, a stick, extension cord, a switch off a tree, whatever. At the same time, my pain tolerance went up. ... It came to the point where it built toughness. ... Yeah, it hurt, but I wasn't scared. I knew what was coming. Wasn't nothing I wasn't prepared for."
It was a formidable education, that which all great fighters must eventually master: fear. Miss Debra enabled him to conquer his own imagination. Be it a casket or a strap or the prospect of Wiley trying to smash his ribs, Bud knew he could get to the other side.
"I always have the ability to believe in myself when nobody else does." And one day, when he was about 12: "I just look at her like, 'Pshh, that don't hurt.' I grabbed the belt, tell her, 'You ain't hitting me no more.'"
Terence Crawford goes through timed rounds of working the bag and box jumping with Wayne Sullivan, a friend of Crawford's who competes in MMA.
They'd still be partying when Wiley pulled up. It was 4 a.m. on Larimore Street, with that clatter people make when they're drinking on the porch, the lit end of a Newport, glowing like a firefly.
Debra Crawford would call to her son: "Your white daddy's here."
Wiley could tell the remark hurt, as Terence Sr. -- once semi-famous in Omaha as a high school wrestler -- was away in the Navy.
"What you crying about?" Wiley asked Crawford as he climbed into the truck.
Bud, an eighth grader, would vow never to smoke or drink. Then they'd head up the old Mormon Trail for roadwork -- anywhere from three to five miles -- before Wiley dropped him off at school. Exactly which school is difficult to recall, as Bud was thrown out of five -- all for fighting.
That made him right at home in the CW Boxing Club, whose members were drawn from the ranks of north Omaha's Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples and a branch of Insane Vice Lords that included Bud's future trainer, Brian McIntyre. While he cuts a Falstaffian figure in the boxing world -- "BoMac," as he's known, wasn't always this cuddly. McIntyre once put a kid through a glass door. He even shot at a cop. But come afternoon, if he wasn't locked up, Bo would be in the gym.
"Carl Washington saved me," he says.
By the mid-'90s, Washington was counseling gang members full time, leaving most of the boxing -- and some of the saving, perhaps -- to Midge.
"Turn your ass back around," Midge would yell at Crawford.
The cranky trainer and his recalcitrant charge made for an oddly beautiful pairing, noticed McIntyre, who felt some simpatico with the kid. Crawford was more than a fellow delinquent. BoMac remembered the trepidation with which
Mayweather. Still, Bud's burgeoning technique remained very much his own. From the right side, he had more power. From the left, however, he found a better rhythm, a sadistic southpaw jazz.
"It would confuse me," says Rosendo Robles, the gym's other young alpha. "Then I'd have to take a step back and he'd catch you with the lead left or a right hook."
Robles was one weight class bigger, with a vicious left hook. Midge kept them mostly apart, like fighting dogs, else they rip into each other. On the road for tournaments, though, they shared a room. If their days involved violence (not all of it in the ring), their nights ended peacefully: Bud and Rosendo on their knees, giving thanks before turning out the light.
What really surprised, Rosendo, though, came after he lost in the Junior Olympics. Rosendo couldn't help it; he began to weep.
"Don't worry," said Crawford, putting his arms around Rosendo. "It'll be OK."
Bud Crawford was a hugger.
